Is Guitar Hero too sinful for your tastes? Then maybe you should try Guitar Praise.

The new video game, coming in a few weeks from Digital Praise for $100, mimics the Guitar Hero concept, but the songs are by Christian bands, including Petra and Relient K. Aside from providing more praise-worthy music, Guitar Praise provides a more wholesome playing experience, according to its maker, “with clean lyrics and a game that reaffirms a child’s self-esteem.” For example, its website says, “If you can’t keep up, the artists will take a break and stop the music” — not boo you, a PR rep added, as they do in that wicked, wicked Guitar Hero. (Of course, players can turn off that feature in GH, but let’s not mention that.) “Crank it up and try again — you’ll soon be rockin’ with the best while praising the Lord!”

Seriously, Guitar Praise surely has an audience. I think it’s biggest problem will be that it connects only to computers, not video-game consoles, which is kind of lame.  But I’m sure that its fans will have a good time with it.

Still, it’s hard not laugh at this great reader comment from BB Gadget’s writeup about the game:  “I heard that [the] Vatican will be releasing Bingo Hero.”

I finally caught up with Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune, a fantastic game for the PlayStation 3. It’s also one of the best-reviewed titles, currently among the top 10 of Metacritic’s All-Time High Scores for the PS3. That doesn’t mean it’s perfect. Every game has flaws, but maybe these few recent examples stand out so much because the overall games are so consistently top-notch.

Warning: There are major spoilers ahead. Go play a classic video game at the Midway Arcade if you don’t want the endings ruined. 

Uncharted: This highly cinematic title takes players on a rip-roaring romp to find the fabled El Dorado. The lead character, Nathan Drake, a descendant of explorer Sir Francis Drake, uses two main skills to drive the adventure: super-human agility to leap across chasms and swing from ledges, and fantastic marksmanship with an arsenal of weapons to shoot every bad guy in sight (pictured). Although there is some stealth and occasional hand-to-hand combat (usually when you run out of ammo), Uncharted is basically a shooter. So how do you dispatch the ultimate bad guy in the game’s final interactive sequence? You punch him a few times. Not only that, but they are choreographed moves, with the player pressing the buttons in response to onscreen prompts. Really.

Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots: All of the glowing reviews for Snake’s final outing have praised the game for being “just like playing a movie.”  Yes, but it’s a lame movie, with ridiculous plot machinations and monotone dialogue. I laughed aloud when I heard the back story of Laughing Octopus, a sinister adversary with a tentacled armor suit — until you find out that she became that way after a “cult of crazies who for some reason hate(d)” her Scandinavian village “with a passion” attacked the seaside community. The attackers forced her to laugh while making her execute and torture everyone else in the village, “one of the few places in Europe where they ate octopus customarily.” As the blood flowed, it turned black, like octopus ink. She went crazy from the experience and never stopped laughing — even though she was really scared, not amused — eventually becoming Laughing Octopus. That has to be one of the worst origination stories ever. Ever.

Halo 3: Here is the final entry in one of the most heralded shooters in the history of video games. To get through each level, you shoot, shoot, shoot. Next level — shoot, shoot, shoot. Level after that — shoot, shoot, shoot. Every now and then, you have to operate a vehicle, which just serves as a vivid reminder of what a great shooter Halo 3 is, because the controls for the vehicles are horrible. So what do you have to do in the climactic interactive sequence of the game to get to the long-awaited ending(?) of Master Chief’s adventure? Drive, drive , drive — and it’s a Warthog, one of the worst-designed vehicles in the game. Ugh.

I was going to lambaste the boring bowling game in Grand Theft Auto IV, but — unlike the above examples — you can choose not to play it.

Now, these are all highly rated, popular games for a reason: They deserve to be, and I do love them overall. So these are just nits in the big picture. Except for Laughing Octopus …

Are you surprised that Muxtape is still “unavailable for a brief period” after its run-in earlier this week with the Recording Industry Association of America? I’m not. See OLGA, whose temporary shutdown has run for more than two years.

The RIAA says Muxtape ignored music-copyright laws by allowing members to upload MP3 files of their favorite artists. There’s no word yet on when or if the popular website will return, but an intellectual property lawyer told Rolling Stone that he believes Muxtape can win a legal battle if it has up to $3 million to fight the RIAA. How likely does that seem?

Meanwhile, in the Internet’s latest test of copyright laws, a new website, Mygazines, encourages users to scan and upload printed articles from current magazines for others to read for free using the site’s built-in viewer. These aren’t just the online versions of articles but the complete layouts from the actual publication. I have to admit that it’s pretty cool — until it starts reproducing the Star Tribune and my now-defunct music publication, of course. It surely won’t last for long, right?

Talk about your big-screen TVs. This one at the State Fair measures 20 feet. But it isn’t trying to sell the latest home-theater gadget; it’s in the Twin Cities to educate consumers about the federally mandated transition to digital TV on Feb. 17.

The DVD Trekker is part of the National Association of Broadcasters’ DTV Road Show, which will be here for the duration of the State Fair.

“Consumers need to learn about the steps they can take to upgrade to digital before it’s too late,” said Jonathan Collegio, vice president of the DTV transition unit at the NAB.  “As broadcasters, our goal is to ensure that no American loses television reception in February 2009 due to a lack of information about the transition to digital. The DTV road show provides a fun and engaging event for families to get the information they need to prepare for the switch to digital television.”

Besides the swanky DTV Trekker, the road show includes kiosks that offer demos of analog vs. digital TV, literature explaining the transition and games.

The DTV Trekker will be at the State Fair from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. each day through Sept. 1 at the northeast corner of Murphy Av. and Cooper St. Look for the big rabbit-ear antennas.

Well, that was bad timing. Today I wrote about the cool website Muxtape, which allows users to upload their MP3s to the website to share as a virtual mixtape. But word now comes that the site is in limbo as of Monday night. A message on the site’s home page says simply: “Muxtape will be unavailable for a brief period while we sort out a problem with the RIAA.” It will be interesting to see how brief that period turns out to be, considering that this is the same way things unfolded for the guitar-tab archive OLGA, which is still down almost two years later. We’ll keep an eye on this one. Meanwhile, try Mixwit while Muxtape is down.

The indispensible Dealnews has the inside scoop on how to score an 80GB PlayStation 3 for $250. It involves signing up for a Sony Visa card and cashing in on a $150 sign-up incentive to get the discount on the $400 player, including free shipping. That’s too much work for many people — plus being saddled with another credit card, even in the short term — but it certainly is a deal for those willing to put in the effort.

The PS3, by the way, continues to outsell the Xbox 360 in the latest monthly video-game sales report from NPD Group, 224,900 units to 204,800. Both are still far behind the Wii, which sold 555,000 units in July, according to NPD.